NotebookLM App Now Lets You Customize Slides and Infographics
Google's NotebookLM mobile app just became significantly more powerful for professionals who rely on AI-generated summaries. The latest update introduces granular customization options for Slide Decks and Infographics—features previously limited to desktop users. Now, whether you're preparing a last-minute presentation or distilling research into shareable visuals, you can adjust orientation, format, length, language, and source material directly from your phone. This closes a major functionality gap between mobile and web versions of Google's AI note-taking assistant.
Credit: Google
The update arrives as mobile AI productivity tools face increasing scrutiny over their real-world utility. NotebookLM's expansion signals Google's commitment to making on-the-go knowledge synthesis genuinely practical rather than merely convenient. For knowledge workers, students, and researchers, these new controls transform the app from a passive summarization tool into an active creative partner.
Why Mobile Customization Matters for AI Workflows
Until this week, NotebookLM's mobile experience felt like a streamlined preview of its desktop capabilities. Users could generate Slide Decks and Infographics, but only with default settings determined by Google's AI. Need a portrait-oriented infographic for Instagram? A concise slide deck for a quick team sync? Previously, you'd need to switch devices or accept whatever format the AI produced.
This limitation undermined the app's core promise: helping users synthesize information wherever inspiration strikes. True productivity mobility means maintaining creative control regardless of device. With these new customization options, NotebookLM acknowledges that context dictates output. A slide deck for personal review demands different detail density than one designed for client presentation. An infographic shared in a Slack channel requires different dimensions than one embedded in a report.
The timing aligns with broader industry shifts toward context-aware AI tools. As professionals increasingly reject one-size-fits-all automation, platforms that offer meaningful customization—without overwhelming complexity—gain competitive advantage. NotebookLM's approach strikes this balance by surfacing only the most impactful controls.
How Infographic Customization Works in Practice
Tap the Studio tab in the updated NotebookLM app, and you'll notice subtle pencil icons beside your Infographic and Slide Deck options. Tapping the icon next to Infographic reveals four key adjustment points:
Orientation gives you immediate control over layout with Landscape, Portrait, or Square formats. This proves invaluable when matching platform requirements—Square for social feeds, Portrait for mobile viewing, Landscape for traditional presentations.
Sources lets you dynamically adjust which documents or notes feed into the visual. Perhaps your initial infographic pulled from five research papers, but you now want to isolate insights from just two key sources. This selective sourcing prevents visual clutter and sharpens your message.
Prompt refinement allows mid-generation course correction. If the AI emphasizes statistics when you need conceptual frameworks, you can tweak your instruction without starting from scratch. This iterative approach mirrors how humans actually refine ideas.
Language selection supports multilingual workflows, critical for global teams. Generate an infographic in English for leadership, then instantly recreate it in Spanish for regional stakeholders—all while preserving your source material and structural choices.
These controls transform infographics from static outputs into living artifacts you can adapt as your understanding evolves. The real power emerges when combining adjustments: a Square-format, Spanish-language infographic drawing only from your most recent field notes, optimized for quick sharing in a WhatsApp group.
Slide Deck Customization: From Reading Aid to Presentation Tool
Slide Deck customization introduces even more nuanced control, particularly around format selection. The Detailed Deck option generates comprehensive slides with full explanatory text—ideal when sharing materials with absent colleagues or creating self-contained documentation. These slides function as standalone resources requiring no verbal accompaniment.
Conversely, Presenter Slides deliver minimalist visuals with only essential talking points. This format respects audience attention spans while giving speakers flexibility to elaborate naturally. The distinction matters profoundly: too much text on presentation slides undermines speaker credibility, while too little leaves audiences disoriented. NotebookLM now helps users navigate this balance intentionally.
Length controls further refine utility. Free users access Short and Default options, while Google AI Ultra subscribers unlock Long decks for deep-dive scenarios. Combined with language selection and source filtering, these options let you generate everything from a three-slide executive summary to a twenty-slide workshop curriculum—all from the same source material, adjusted through thoughtful parameters rather than manual rewriting.
Accessing the New Features Today
The customization rollout began last week and continues expanding across Android and iOS devices. If you don't see pencil icons in your Studio tab, force-close the NotebookLM app completely, then relaunch. This triggers a fresh feature flag check against Google's servers. Ensure you're running version 1.8 or later—available now through the Play Store and App Store.
While customizing, remember that thoughtful prompting still matters. The new controls amplify good inputs but can't compensate for vague source material. For best results, curate focused source collections before generating visuals. A deck built from three tightly related documents will always outperform one pulling from twenty loosely connected files.
Also note this week's companion update: Video Overviews now appear in the mobile app. These AI-narrated summaries with dynamic visuals offer another consumption format, though customization options for videos remain unavailable. Google appears prioritizing text-and-image output controls first—a sensible approach given their higher utility for professional sharing.
What's Still Missing From Mobile Studio
Despite these meaningful additions, the mobile Studio tab hasn't achieved full feature parity with desktop. Mind Maps, Reports, and Data Tables remain web-exclusive capabilities. These omissions particularly impact researchers who rely on Mind Maps for conceptual exploration or Data Tables for quantitative synthesis.
The absence of Video Overview customization also stands out. While you can now generate video summaries on mobile, you cannot yet adjust narration style, visual emphasis, or segment length—controls available for slides and infographics. This suggests Google is rolling out customization capabilities feature-by-feature based on usage data and technical complexity.
These gaps don't diminish the current update's value but do highlight that mobile AI productivity remains a work in progress. The thoughtful sequencing—prioritizing the most frequently shared output formats first—demonstrates Google's user-centric rollout strategy. Rather than delaying the entire customization suite until all features were ready, they delivered high-impact controls immediately.
Real-World Applications Beyond the Obvious
Beyond standard presentation prep, these customization options unlock creative professional workflows. Journalists can generate portrait infographics optimized for mobile news consumption while commuting between interviews. Consultants might create three format variations of the same deck—one Detailed for client handoff, one Presenter for the actual meeting, and one Short for follow-up emails.
Language switching enables rapid localization. An educator preparing materials for international students can generate concept summaries in multiple languages within minutes, maintaining pedagogical consistency while accommodating linguistic diversity. Field researchers can adjust infographic orientation to match the aspect ratio of devices used by community partners.
The most powerful applications emerge when combining customization layers. Imagine generating a Short Presenter Deck in Spanish from your latest interview notes, then immediately creating a Square infographic in English highlighting key quotes for social promotion—all before your morning coffee finishes brewing. This fluidity between formats and contexts represents the maturation of AI from novelty to necessity.
The Bigger Picture for Mobile AI Productivity
NotebookLM's mobile evolution reflects a critical industry inflection point. Early mobile AI tools prioritized speed and simplicity, often sacrificing depth. The assumption—that mobile users only want quick answers—proved limiting. Professionals increasingly conduct substantive work on phones and tablets, demanding tools that respect their expertise rather than dumbing down capabilities.
Google's approach with this update demonstrates sophisticated product philosophy: mobile interfaces should simplify access to power features, not eliminate the features themselves. The pencil icon paradigm works because it keeps the interface clean for casual users while surfacing depth for power users. This layered accessibility will likely influence how other AI platforms approach mobile design.
As AI assistants evolve beyond chat interfaces into creative collaborators, customization becomes the differentiator between tools that merely automate and those that genuinely augment human cognition. NotebookLM's mobile update doesn't just add features—it repositions the app as a serious instrument for knowledge work wherever you happen to be standing.
The most telling detail? Google didn't just port desktop controls to mobile. They rethought which parameters matter most in on-the-go contexts—orientation for sharing, format for audience needs, language for global collaboration. That contextual intelligence separates thoughtful AI design from feature checklists. For professionals betting their workflows on mobile AI, that distinction makes all the difference.
